miércoles, 8 de marzo de 2017

Every day was almost exactly the same. He
would wake up, have something to eat, then shower, look for a job and then
lunch. After that, it would be hours and hours of basically nothing until
dinner. At night and in the morning he would exercise a bit and before going to
bed he would watch something, like a movie or whatever was available. That was
life like for him, even after he had decided it would be different. His
decisions in life had amounted to nothing and he didn’t know what to do.

He had been living there for almost a year and
nothing had happened, nothing at all. Not a single change since his arrival. He
tried to keep it different by distracting himself with movie or by going out to
walk around the city, but that didn’t change anything either. It was a
perpetual movement he was trapped in, a series of actions he repeated every
single day, every week and every single month, no matter the little differences
like weather or things like that. Things didn’t change.

He had tried to change them. He had really
tried but he soon realized that one person couldn’t really change the world.
Whoever had said that in the past was wrong. A single lonely human couldn’t
change a thing in this world. Every major shift had to involve lots of people
with a common goal and a certain organization. And he didn’t have that at all.
He was alone and he depended on his parents for survival. They weren’t happy
for him or anything, but they felt they couldn’t refuse him help.

The money he received as an allowance was used
very carefully to pay for the apartment, the bills and the food. Those were the
normal expenses. He sometimes used the money for distractions, going out and
that sort of thing. In those instances he would have to remember that he was
taking money away for his food. He never minded. Besides, it wasn’t something
he did often; on the contrary, he managed his money in the most careful way
because it was just enough to survive.

But that was the thing: he had been thinking
for a long time if it was worth it to keep on living as he was. He was draining
money from his parents every month, he was sitting on his ass doing nothing,
except getting older and older people have a harder time getting a job. But no
one was giving him a job, not now or before. Not when he was recently graduated
or after his various years of studies all over the place. They had never
acknowledged him as a nothing more than a man that could pick up a phone or
move boxes from one place to the other.

The money he earned for such jobs disappeared
very fast. Most of it was taken away by the health service they provided, which
he never used. And the rest was used to pay debts or bills. Nothing remained.
Those times, whoever, he could grab a little more from his parents money in
order to have fun, even for a short period of time. He would get drunk, go out
and party and just forget about everything in his life and who he was. He lost
himself every time or at least he tried.

He loved going out to dark places with loud
music, wherever they could have alcohol. He even tried drugs a couple of times
but it wasn’t his thing. The point of it all was forgetting his life, which was
pathetic and sad. He was a leech and a waste of space. He remembered that
expression once and it had gotten stuck on his head since then because it
described so well what he thought of his place in life. He did feel as if he
was a waste of space and would have loved it to be different.

But it wasn’t things are as they are and one’s
blind optimism cannot change that. People want every single person in the world
to think blindly that everything is going to be ok but the reality of life is
that probably nothing will be ok. The world itself is more and more violent,
not a hospitable place for actual life to develop. So why should people be
blind to that? Why should be people avoid the truth, instead of embracing it
and maybe then find a solution for whatever the problem is?

Many times, he looked around his house and
carefully planned his last day on Earth. It was kind of like a game he played
with himself when things where a its lowest. He would imagine cutting his
wrists on the tub and having one of those almost artistic deaths, with the
blood tainting the water slowly and also spilling gently to the floor. It
looked almost like a romantic thing inside his head. But it would take too long
and that wasn’t something he was very eager about.

He imagined many other outcomes for his life.
Some more admittedly violent and graphic but others were even more subtle that
the one in the tub. He had a great imagination, which he used laying on his
bed, waiting for someone to respond to his calls looking for one of the many
menial jobs the world had to offer. He had realized a while ago that no one was
going to give him a good job where he could feel like a real person. He was
apparently built to be a slave and he had decided he didn’t mind at all, it was
his destiny all along and that was settled.

Sure enough, he had two jobs latter on: one as
part of the cleaning crew in a hospital and another one in a supermarket, doing
basically the same thing. He would break his back for a pay that was laughable
but there was nothing else to do. However, he decided one day to ask his
parents not to send him any more money. They did ask him “why” but he never
answered, so they just did as they were told and the subject never came up
again, in telephone conversations or when he visited, which was rare.

He
had decided he would survive with whatever he had. His meals were greatly
reduced and he had to move to another apartment, one even smaller in a much
uglier part of the city. He sold some of his belongings too, in order to pay
for the first couple of months. He tried to set aside something every month for
pleasure, such as alcohol or whatever he would be in the mood for. Those small
moments were not of joy but of quiet and a certain peace, which he still
enjoyed.

After some months living his new life, he got
very sick with the flu. He stopped earning money for almost three weeks. When
the disease didn’t kill him, the lack of food almost did. He actually had to be
rushed into the hospital but he escaped it as soon as he could because he
didn’t have the money to pay for a hospital bed. He just bought bread and
medicine and hoped for the best. He was fired from the hospital he worked in
but kept the supermarket job, where they raised his salary a bit in order to
make him do more stuff.

As always, he didn’t really mind. He got
better, or just about, and start working harder every day. The hours were
longer than before and this time he had to work every single day of the week
but at least he was distracted by something. He didn’t have time to ponder or
think about what could have been or what the future may hold for him. Those
were empty questions now and no one care about the answers. He had lost the
will to rebel in any way. He just lived, if that’s what it’s called.

He was eventually fired from that job too. Not
long after that, he decided to jump off a bridge that passed over a highway.
His parents had nothing to keep from him anymore, as he had sold almost
everything except and old notebook he had kept from when he was young, Inside,
he had written a number of stories and he had also drawn lots of characters and
abstract figures. They took one look at it and then stored it away somewhere.
The man became a memory and, after his parents died, it was as if he had never
existed on this Earth.

sábado, 18 de junio de 2016

The light seemed to be far away, moving far
from my fingers each time I moved my arms. The space I was in seemed very open
and, for a moment, I felt that would be the feeling of being floating in space,
without a proper astronaut suit of course. I have no idea why I thought that at
that moment. Isn’t the brain supposed to prioritize things in our bodies in
order to make us live longer? However, I could almost see the ship I had come
out too, floating silently in front of me, and a big planet below me. But all
that didn’t matter because I was about to die.

The thought lasted just a second but it was
strong enough for me to move faster, to force my tired arms to do a little bit
more work. Every single vein and nerve in my body was crying in pain, my brain
hurt so much I couldn’t stand it. I had always wished to be taller in order to
have bigger arms and feet, which would have helped so much in that moment. But
I wasn’t.I was just the opposite of
that and I was in a position where wishing was useless.

My last movements towards the light were
desperate. It was then when my body felt like it was empty. Every single thing
that had no real use, every function that didn’t serve a purpose in that
moment, they all disappeared in order to focus on the fact that I was going to
die if my body didn’t perform something close to a miracle. Because I had never
done what I about to do. It was a triumph I would never really be aware of and
that’s ok because it worked.

It was my right hand, my main hand if you
will, the first limb of my body to feel the air outside. It felt terribly cold,
colder that the water in the lagoon. The air seemed to be against me too but
the difference was I could breathe that. The water was different, invasive and
dangerous. Before and after that, I could never understand the people that are
fascinated with water and would like to spend their lives in it.

I guess that makes me a hypocrite. Because I
kind of was one of those people before that. Since the earliest age, my parents
took me to the ocean, to swimming pools, lake or wherever I could swim. I took
classes and even competed for prizes when I was in school. Modesty aside, I won
several of those competitions because I had a serious passion about the water,
about how my body moved in it and it felt like home.

The hard time would be during my teenage years
when, for reasons I shouldn’t address, I became increasingly larger in size.
And it was nature doing its job; it was more like junk food and sugar doing
their thing. It was then when I got depressed for the very first time. Self
diagnosed, of course. I never went to any doctor or shrink to tell me how I
felt. Even at that age I found the concept ridiculous.

Of course, I stopped my swimming. I was too
big for the bathing suit and too sad to move my arms that fast. It was like
that for years and I had to put away any remainder of who I had been before
because it hurt too hard. Somehow, I had become a disappointment for myself. Is
there anything more pathetic than that? I have no idea. The point is my
attention shifted from one thing to the next. You can blame puberty for that. I
just had to survive high school so, as when I swam, my body had to get its
priorities straight.

It was only in my last years of college, more
than ten years after I had dropped out of the swim team in school, that I came
back to the water. It’s amazing to think about it, but in that time I never
really swam. Yes, I went to the beach or to houses with pools. But I would only
be in the water for a moment, if at all. Maybe surprising but true. I felt I
didn’t belong there anymore so why overstay my welcome?

Aged twenty-three years old, I discovered a
gym close to my house that had a swimming pool. The best part was you could
reserve one of the swimming lanes for an hour and didn’t put anyone to tell you
how to do anything. It was absolutely free of that. So I decided to go and, at
first, I felt as drowned as in the lagoon. But I decided I would not ask for
help and, slowly, it all came back to me.

After my first week, the people that worked
there congratulated me for my style, my technique. Although one of them
reminded me, as if I didn’t know, that I was too short and that could be a
problem. I know what he meant: being short in a pool is a problem because you
take longer to reach the other side, even if it is by a few centimeters. Those
can be decisive in a competition and they were certainly decisive in the
lagoon. If I had been taller, the sense of terror would have been less
powerful.

When I had two arms outside of the water, the
only thing I could do was taking a big breath. I felt alive, although barely.
My legs hurt so much but they kept on moving until I reached the shore, which
was obscured by the shadow caster over by the rocky structure above the lagoon.
It was like a vault that enclosed the whole system. Why would I ever think it
was a good idea to swim in a flooded cave?

But as the soon got higher in the sky, the
place seemed to get larger and the water revealed itself as so transparent and
perfect. The sky was evenly reflected on its surface. It was so well done, the
surface of the water, that had calmed down fast after I had gotten out of it,
seemed like a huge mirror where God could check himself out.

I lay down in my back, conscious I would have
to swim back to the exit. Before I got comfortable, I checked for animals, bugs
and others. After all, it was an arid place and little animals are known to live
through the cracks of rocks and such. But when I was down, looking at the sky
through the opening before me, I realized that was, again, my first time
swimming in a very long time.

The pool in the gymnasium was great. After
some time, I got a proper job wearing a tie and a suit, which I’ve always
hated, so I had to move my swimming hours to a later time. I would go the
moment work finished, around six or seven in the afternoon. I would stay there
for an hour, not stopping for more that a few seconds. I got new fans, new
people that told me they were really surprised by me. I can’t tell you how much
I loved that attention, which I had never gotten for anything else.

However, I caught the eye of one particular
person and from then on, I only cared about his comments and his smiles. I had
learned not to let opportunities go by, so after a week of random looks, I
decided to approach him after I was done swimming. It was weird because it was
in the locker room, where people grabbed their stuff to have a shower or
changed their clothes. He was wearing his bathing suit, like me, when I asked
him if he would like to have a drink in a bar close to there.

That was our first date. We considered it our
first date a year later, when we celebrated the anniversary of our
relationship. We didn’t really celebrate, we just got together and did the
things we both like: we went swimming to a beautiful lake, we had a picnic with
many delicious things to eat and we kissed and made love in my car, which was
incredibly comfortable for such a vehicle.

Our relationship lasted for almost three
years. One month shy of our relationship turning three years old, he was
assaulted in the street by some guy that wanted to steal his money. The guy had
a gun and shot him with it, once. The bullet hit his spine. We all got to the
hospital in time to say a few words. Then, he was gone. As if he had never
existed. We had so many plans, a life of plans. This city is crazy.

I came to the desert because of what happened.
I needed to escape from everyone and everything. I still think about him, date
and night. I cry for him and I also have wet dreams with him. But it’s in the
water I feel him the most. I guess that’s why I challenged myself to swim through
the flooded cave. And that’s why I’m challenging myself to go back. For him but
also for me. I need to feel alive again.

martes, 13 de octubre de 2015

Now that I realize, I had confused two very
different notions. One was being alone. The other was being lonely. I had
thought once that I loved being lonely. You know, just a misunderstood soul
wandering about, having deep thoughts about humanity and myself. I thought that
I loved to be away from everyone because I had so much within me that it was
better for others to be away. I was so full of myself, I didn’t even notice how
I really felt, and deluding myself into thinking I loved the sound of silence,
the sound of the void awaiting all of us. It was all a big confusion and the
worst thing is I think I had always known but I wanted to believe so bad I was
a special human being, with characteristics no other could have. The truth is
no one is unique, not at all.

The truth is I hate being lonely because it
makes me feel sad and depressed. When I’m lonely, I slowly slide down to a
point where everything is awful and I stop liking anything and everything. It
has always been difficult for me to like myself, to take a look in the mirror
and be positive, somehow, about what I see. When I’m alone that’s always
difficult, but I’m able to pull through. But when I’m lonely, the story is
different: I hate myself so much right then and there. I would want to smash the
mirror I’m looking to or my head, if what I’m doing is only imagining myself.
It can be awful sometimes, but I guess darkness hasn’t got the right angle yet,
as I’m still here.

I hate people or at least think I hate them
all. Always so happy about nothing, proud about a bunch of things I find
utterly ridiculous. If I were brave, I would be a bully, someone who wouldn’t
think twice before smashing someone head against a wall. But I’ve never being
that person never had the amount of courage needed to speak up or to act
according to my emotions. And if I do, it’s usually too little too late.In this era of bullies and bullying, I have
never being the one to do it but haven’t really being a victim of it. Shall I
cry and despair because they mocked me behind my back or because I was a laugh
playing sports? No, that was my reality and I lived with it. That’s what I did
and I think I would do it all the same again if I could.

Because many of these problems started in
school, that’s obvious. Before that I had no intention or need to look at
myself and then at others and compare what I saw. But even at age ten, I
already knew that there were people that were deemed “better”. You know the
kind, those damn people who were smart, bright, and very witty with the words
and had a very physical self also. They had it all and if they screwed it up
they could try it again and again until they were successful. Me, not so much.
Once I sucked at something, usually I would suck at it for many years. Even
teachers knew that.

After all, I was educated in the European
tradition and they don’t fuck around with education. Not at all. They want
their students to know it all and know it good. Which was a shame because I
didn’t get all and what I did know fluctuated in time. I was never the perfect
student, not even if I was good at a couple of subjects. That only meant I had
a lifeline I could use not to be completely fucked by life, but I was fucked
only that less violently, if you will. I would have given it all to be one of
those nerds, to humiliate everyone at least once. A jock? No, that would have
made even me laugh very hard and it wouldn’t have made sense at all. The point
of it all was that no matter what, I was lonely and that affected it all.

If I had had friends, not like occasional
“let’s talk” people but real fucking friends, maybe everything would have been
different. Maybe if someone had needed me back then I would be, at least, much
more confident now and even with a more tenacious personality. Of course, that
would make me a very different person but that’s kind of the point. If I hadn’t
been alone and feeling the loneliness even from that age, I do think that the
road would have been at least a bit better. But well, that’s me, always
thinking about what could have been. The truth is that I don’t believe things
can just change, I don’t think that I can be spontaneous and positive and
social just out of nowhere. That would just scare the fuck out everyone around
me, I know as much.

Anyway,
that’s what being lonely is. You just don’t believe in change and also because
change doesn’t exist when you’re a human being. I have never really seen anyone
change and if they do it it’s not because they have actually modified their way
of seeing the world. It’s because they have been scared to death by the
apparent closeness of death or failure or something that they dread. Changing
out of fear is the only real modification people do in their lives and that
doesn’t count as you are probably faking in it all, just not to be targeted by
whatever you’re scared about. Like if I became very social out of fear to die a
lonely crazy guy.

It’s all applicable anywhere in your life. You
can feel both lonely and alone in every situation you face.The all-mighty love, for example. That thing
people feel in their guts, like a balloon that, if not controlled properly, can
explode inside of you and make you feel like garbage. Well, that balloon can
make you feel very lonely when the other person doesn’t even know you’re there
or, worse, doesn’t really care about your existence. Because those couples that
last a hundred years, that’s just two people scared shitless that they will
never find anyone else in their lives to put up with their shit. So they play
it safe and stay with the same person for years and years and years until
society pressures marriage upon them.

Romantic, isn’t it? Yeah, it is. But the real
way to feel lonely in all this love context is simply when no one even looks at
you. And don’t I know it? I have profound experience on being “looking” for so
long that it’s no longer funny. I believe I have gone through most stages a man
goes through sexually and romantically without even sharing them with anyone.
It maybe why I hate other people, especially men. Complaining and whining about
how their life is awful because their boyfriend spends one less hour with them
now that he owns a company. Well, I feel so bad for you… Fuckers. That’s what
being lonely does to you: if you don’t die, you turn into a very cold and
bitter bitch.

And I have to say I like it. After all, my
personality saves me everyday and makes me be “en garde” all day, all the time.
Not that I have a lot of things dawning on me or anything but I think I’m an
expert now on how to manage some feelings. I have been sad many times before,
feeling that anxiety and the need to leave it all and just go. But I know how
to control all of that, and swallow it all in order to keep going. Why? I have
no idea. I’m not one of those people that’s in love with life or the beauty of
it or some of that stupid stuff. I just do it because I have a survival
instinct that just doesn’t let me do anything against myself. And I guess
that’s good or at least not bad. I mean, I don’t feel lonely every second of my
life.

At times, many times, I do feel happy and I
love the few but very important people I have close to my soul. Now, more than
anytime before, I have them all in my heart because I need them. It’s selfish,
of course it is, but that’s life and I’m not larger that life or better than
it. I’m just a tiny part of the whole scheme, so I just do as I feel. Granted,
men only want me to fuck me and that’s it, so there’s no love then or in the
near future but that I don’t care. The rest of my life is still standing on tiny
little sticks and I’d rather have all of that settled on cement before I
advance to more “ethereal” subjects such as love. There will be a time for me
to do all of that but it isn’t now. You’ll know, I guess.

My fear, however, is that I engulf so much
trying to get by that someday I would explode trying to defend myself against
all those things I have in my head. Because I’m no ignorant: it’s still all
there, trying to get me every single second. It rests for a long time and then
awakens again, ready to fight me to check on my defense. Battles and battles
have been fought and they have always concluded when those feelings surrender
and they realize I’m not weak enough for them to win. And it’s not that I
become the winner, they just decide no to keep fighting. I dread of the day
they stop doing that, surrendering. That day when they will not stop and when
just keep going, certain of their victory.

martes, 14 de octubre de 2014

His eyes move, a lot, still asleep. His hairs is all on one side so we can easily see, on his forehead, a big mark. Red, with lines and black dots.

The man, or boy pending on your definition, wakes up rather fast, opening his eyes as if he had been scared by the boogieman in a dream. He doesn't move, as the physical pain of his forehead comes to him and he has to relive everything again.

He finally gets out of bed and goes to the bathroom. With one hand he holds his hair and stares at his image. The red mark is centered right above the nose. Frowning hurts a bit but he has no way of doing some other facial expression. He lets his hair down again and pees and then washes his hands.

As he walks to the kitchen, he thinks that at least it's not bleeding now, as it was yesterday night. He touches his forehead with care and then watches his fingers: clean.

In the kitchen, he pours some juice into a glass and drinks half of it as if he had been walking across a dessert for years. When he's done, he goes to the living room and sits on the sofa, to watch people go by.

Have they ever done that too? Have they ever caved to their urges and fears and weaknesses?

Who knows... He just watches them as he finishes up the juice and, once again, touches his forehead.

He then remembers being in school, twelve years old or something like that and being mocked for having peed his pants. He was so afraid of speaking to anyone he had held his urge for too much time and accidents happen. No one was kind, nor nice, nor decent. They were all animals and he hated them for it. He was just a kid and from then on, he felt rejected, an outcast.

No, not the moment for that. He goes to the kitchen again and makes a sandwich. Somehow, he's starving. He must have had an awful dream or one of those were you run like crazy, not knowing why.

He goes back in the sofa and eats his breakfast as he sees a man helping a woman with some boxes. They smile and each other and are oddly kind. People are not like that, almost never

He then remembers what it was for him to turn into a teenager, parties and all. And still feeling left out. It was incredible how much he had hated everyone in school so much, and none of them knew. They had no idea he never wanted to see them again. He didn't wish them harm or anything but he didn't care about their happiness. He was too hurt and alone.

The last year of school was different. He was just himself, as he knew he would never come back again. And college was another story, with different disappointments. No, not all was bad. Friends, real ones, were there.

As he finishes his sandwich, he touches the mark again and goes back to the bathroom. He puts some cold water on it and on his hair, to flatten it so people cannot see it easily. It shames him. It's a mark of shame and despair.

He washes the glass and the plate and enjoys the feel of water on his hands. He flattens his rebel hair again and then goes back to the sofa, now with his laptop. He puts on some music and finds himself reviewing, mentally of course, his bad luck in love.

He had grown tired of going out, dates, getting to know people. They didn't even tried to know him, at least to fake interest. No. They just didn't care much. Sex was first many times and he caved as it was fun and felt good but soon that ran out and it wasn't enough.

And the world wasn't helping. He had grown up to see how he had to look and behave and he wasn't that model everyone was supposed to be. And if you weren't, you lost. And he did, or so he felt.

He changes the song, to something a little more upbeat. Starts reading an article about sea creatures with incredible strength and the people that look out for them.

And again, thoughts. His brain was his enemy, no doubt.

Now he remembered, as if he had forgotten, that he had no money, no job, nothing. He had become bored too of sending his damn CV to every single company, even to fast food restaurants and retail stores. No one wanted him. And that felt awful. It hurt a lot to feel no one needed him, or appreciated what little he could do.

He shook his head, feeling some pinches, as his brain now was trying to escape, to move away as he too had become bored with him. He closed his eyes in pain, trying to push everything inside, deep, never to come back out again.

Suddenly he heard a voice and opened his eyes. It was his mother.

- Hi.

- Hey.

- How are you feeling today?

- Better. Thanks.

- Sure?

He doubts.

- Yeah.

She sighs and moves on to the kitchen.

After hitting himself with the first object he could get his hand on, he stroke his head too with his fists and he had a physical strength that scared him. He had caved to his inner fears, his demons, everything that was eating his brain.

He bled alone and cried as he hadn't done in so many years, when he thought he had kept it all behind. No. The past always comes back to have a bite of your brain, to torture you slowly.

And he, fed up, had taken matters in his owns hands and almost broke his skull.

As his mother made breakfast for herself, he took a few deep breaths and calmed down. He had to be strong, as she had said. "Take control of your feeling. Don't let them control you". And he knew she was right.

He hoped, really hard, that things would change soon. But that is something no one knows, until it happens or it doesn't.